


i like you a latte

by DJBunn3



Series: Voltron Bingo [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bad Puns, Fluff, Humor, M/M, POV Outsider, POV Shiro (Voltron), and for good reason, keith hates puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15910620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJBunn3/pseuds/DJBunn3
Summary: “No,” Shiro says, crossing his arms and glaring down at Lance.“Oh, come on!” Lance argues. “It’s a great name. People would love it!”“Absolutely not.”“I think it’s cute,” Hunk chimes in helpfully.“I amnotcalling large drinksbeanormous,” Shiro says, crossing the name off the list with vigor. “And that’s final.”





	i like you a latte

“No,” Shiro says, crossing his arms and glaring down at Lance.

“Oh, come on!” Lance argues. “It’s a great name. People would love it!”

“Absolutely not.”

“I think it’s cute,” Hunk chimes in helpfully.

“I am  _ not _ calling large drinks  _ beanormous, _ ” Shiro says, crossing the name off the list with vigor. “And that’s final.”

“Good,” Keith says, underlining  _ small, medium, _ and  _ large _ on the whiteboard. “So we’ve got that settled.”

“What about drinks?” Pidge asks, leaning forward on the bar. “What do you want to start with?”

“Black coffee,” Shiro says immediately, putting a giant star next to  _ black _ on the board. Black coffee has saved him many a time, and he’ll be damned if it’s not the first thing on his menu.

“What about a latte?” Lance suggests, propping his head on his hand and batting his eyes at Keith. “You know, like,  _ I like you a latte. _ ”

Keith throws the marker at him.

“A latte is a good idea,” Allura says, ignoring both of them. “Those are popular  _ and _ classic.”

“Agreed,” Hunk says. “But if we’re going for popular, wouldn’t a frappuccino be even better?”

“That’s… not exactly the vibe I’m going for,” Shiro says, glancing around the newly decorated cafe. He’d done his best to make everything look friendly and inviting, from the pictures of dogs and flowers framed on the wall to the fuzzy rugs on the floor to the bookshelf in the corner, lined with his favorite novels.

“But if you have a lot of different options, you could cover a lot more  _ grounds _ ,” Lance says, wiggling his eyebrows. “Get it? Like coffee grounds?”

“We get it,” Keith groans, hitting his head against the bar gently.

“What’s wrong, mullet? Do you not like my puns?” Lance asks innocently, looking up at Keith through his eyelashes.

“ _ Obviously _ ,” Keith says, lifting his head to roll his eyes at Lance. “They’re terrible.”

“You could have just told me. You’ve got to  _ espresso _ yourself.”

“Lance…” Keith growls in warning.

“Don’t be so  _ bitter, _ man,” Lance says, grinning. “Have you always  _ bean _ this way?”

Murder flashes in Keith’s eyes, but Shiro sticks a hand out to stop him from lunging over the counter. “No fighting in my cafe,” he says, staring especially hard at Keith. Because really, if someone’s going to start a fight, there’s a ninety percent chance that it’s gonna be Keith.

“What about an americano?” Hunk suggests, bending down to grab the marker by Lance’s foot and handing it to Keith.

“Americano sounds good,” Shiro agrees, writing it on the list. Americano is safe. There’s absolutely no way Lance can make a pun about Americanos.

“Okay, so we’ve got black coffee, lattes, espresso, and Americanos,” Keith says, reading off the board. “I feel like we’re missing something.”

“Mochas?” Allura suggests.

“Hot chocolate?” Lance says at the same time.

“What about tea?” Pidge adds. Keith raises an eyebrow at him, marker poised above the whiteboard.

“Yes to all three,” Shiro says with a nod. “Although we’ll have to make a separate list for tea.”

“And you can always add stuff to the menu later, right?” Hunk says. “I mean, this is just your starter menu. Once you get a lot of regulars you can see what kinda stuff is popular and what isn’t.”

“That’s true,” Pidge agrees, leaning forward with her arms braced on the counter. “You can try new things and see what works.”

“You’re right.” Shiro writes  _ try new things _ across the board in big, capital letters. “I’ll start with the basics and build up from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Keith says, capping his marker and setting it down on the counter. “Let’s do it.”

“You mean let’s  _ brew _ it?” Lance asks, smirking. Hunk sighs, and Pidge covers her face with her hands and groans. Keith straight up death glares.

“Are we done here?” he asks, completely over it.

“Yes,” Shiro confirms, sending Lance a warning look he’s ninety-nine percent sure won’t do anything. “We’re done for now.”

* * *

The first week after  _ Shiro’s Coffee _ opens is the busiest week of Shiro’s life.

The others had agreed to help him out on the first day, which he’s immensely grateful for. His employees are already spread thin between working the counter and bussing tables, and even with everyone working as fast and hard as they can, there’s still a line throughout most of the day.

He puts Hunk and Keith on drink making duty with him and has Lance and Pidge wait tables with Allura. The six of them are on their feet all day, going back and forth between the counter, the sink, and the sitting area. By the end of the first day, there are coffee grounds on the counter, a pile of dishes in the sink that have yet to be cleaned, and everyone working at the cafe is utterly exhausted. Pidge is currently trying to wash coffee stains off of her shirt from when she’d spilled a (thankfully cool) cup of coffee on herself earlier in the day, Allura’s sitting at the bar and fixing her hair, which is messily falling out of its ponytail from all of the running back and forth, and Keith and Lance are slumped in the cozy chairs in the book corner of the cafe, talking quietly with cups of leftover coffee in hand.

“Good work today,” Shiro says, smiling proudly at his friends. Because sure, he might be exhausted, his shop might be a mess, and he might still have a lot of work ahead of him, but it’s all worth it.

He’s met with tired groans from most of his friends, save for Hunk who’s zoning out at one of the tables. Shiro smiles even bigger, then sends everyone home for the day because they deserve it.

He can finish closing up on his own for now.

* * *

The next few days are a lot easier.

Shiro and his employees start to get the hang of working in the cafe, so he lets the others off the hook for the time being. He learns to station people in one area, either drink making or table serving or handling the register. They get quicker and better the more they practice, and soon enough they can cut through a line almost twice as fast as they’d been going before.

His friends come around to visit, ordering drinks and sitting together for a bit, chatting with him when he has a break. Allura comes on the second day, ordering a black coffee and sitting with her computer open on top of one of the round, white tables in the corner. She’s been working on a big piece for the newspaper she writes for, and Shiro’s pretty sure she’s practically running on coffee at this point. He gives her a couple of free refills before she leaves.

Pidge and Hunk visit on the third day to grab coffees and hang out before they go to class. They’d decided to take an engineering class early in the morning together, and although Pidge swears she regrets it, he knows that she’s glad she’d signed up. The two of them haven’t had the chance to have a class together since Hunk graduated high school a couple of years ago, so he figures they must be glad to be back together again.

On the fourth day, Keith and Lance come in and sit together for almost an hour, hands linked under the table where they think Shiro can’t see.

“Can I get you guys anything else?” Shiro asks during a slow moment in the cafe. Keith shakes his head and stares down at the table, blushing, while Lance grins and waves him off.

“Thanks, but we’re good for now,” he says happily.

“You sure?” Shiro asks, raising an eyebrow. The two of them had finished their drinks almost twenty minutes ago, not that he’s complaining.

“Yeah,” Keith mumbles, propping his head up with his hand.

“Alright, then,” Shiro says. “Back to the daily grind, I guess.”

“Was that a pun?” Lance asks, visibly perking up. “It was! Holy shit, Keith! Shiro made a coffee pun!”

“I heard,” Keith says, smiling amusedly at his boyfriend’s excitement. “It’s awful.”

Shiro turns back to the counter, leaving the two of them alone for the moment. He grabs a couple of dirty plates off of random tables on his way, depositing them by the sink before heading back to the register.

He stands back and surveys his cafe, looking from the couple talking quietly in the corner, to the university students with their laptops plugged in at the bar by the window, to the employees wiping down tables by the door. He’s filled with a sense of pride and achievement greater than anything he’s ever felt before, and he can’t help but smile because of it.

It might be hard, and it might take a lot of work, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. He’s making his dream come true.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed : )  
> [My Tumblr](https://djbunn3.tumblr.com/)  
> 


End file.
